


in time (until tomorrow)

by deadseasburntoutstars (snowontherooftops)



Series: homestuck character studies [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternia, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-29 20:55:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12093243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowontherooftops/pseuds/deadseasburntoutstars
Summary: Karkat Vantas was never a boy who was meant to live.





	in time (until tomorrow)

You are not surprised by death any more.

When you were younger, you had a neighbor. She was a jadeblood named Aemmee, and her hair flowed in clouds down to her knees. In the summer, she would invite you to visit her seadweller matesprite by the water. You always refused, of course, because you're not a fucking idiot, but that never deterred Aemmee. You thought she was an invincible badass in your own private thoughts, but that didn't stop her from dying.

If the Alternian Empire wants you dead, you are going to die. It's that simple.

(the alternian empire wants you dead very badly.)

She had been scheduled to begin working in the brood caverns in a few weeks, and you had never seen her more angry. Aemmee was a girl fashioned out of moon light, but when you last saw her, she was nothing but the most violent starshine. 

"I am not their _slave_ ," She had hissed at you, hair dank and snarled from neglect. "I do not _SERVE THEM_. THEY CAN'T _DO THIS_ TO ME!" Aemmee screamed, tears running off her angular face with the ferocity of a waterfall down a cliff.

She grabbed your shoulders, claws digging into the thick fabric of your sweater. Aemmee shook you harshly. 

"I AM NOT THEIR SLAVE! _I AM NOT THEIR SLAVE_!"

(but everyone was a slave of the empress. there was no fighting it. there was no helping it. there was only living with it, or in your case, dying with it.)

She was the first person you witnessed die, but not the last. The drones came for her in the middle of the day, and when she put up a fight, they killed her. Simple as that. Just decapitated her where she stood on her lawnring, and you stood there and watched, not moving a muscle. She was your best friend, and you watched her die.

But whatever, right?! We all die, it's jut a matter of when. We are all on the verge of dying since the moment we were hatched. There is nothing in this world that is guaranteed other than the fact that we _all_ die. To pretend other wise is a falsehood of the highest fucking degree. 

We all die. It's only a matter of time.

But whatever. Having a dead best friend doesn't make you special, it makes you one of the fucking masses. ' _Join the goddamn club!'_  scream a trillion tormented unhappy fucks. Just because you're suffering doesn't mean that you deserve respite. Quite honestly, it means jack shit. Everyone suffers. There is no escaping that.

(everyone is trapped in chains, whether it be of their own design or somebody else's. there is no escaping these chains, because sometimes we are hatched with them. some of them we die with. some of them are coded into the fabric of our being, and these are the chains we carry into the afterlife. these chains are the worst ones, the ones that are us, the ones we wearily know we will never be free of. this are the chains that ache the fiercest.)

The thing that stuck with you, though, and you mean _really_ stuck with you, is that there is no meaning behind death. There is no poetry, no beauty, just decisions and fact that lead up to a moment in time that a person stops existing. Death is the universe telling you that you have no control, that everything you loved and took for granted as something that would be always there can always be snatched away in a second, in less, in nothing. Death is the universe's way of telling you that everything is temporary.

You will never forget that.

You can never forget that.

(you wish you could. the world would be an easier place to exist in if you didn't know that awful fragility of it, if you didn't know it's bones were made of glass.)

You live day by day, hour by hour, second by second. You live between breaths. Between heartbeats. Every minuscule module of time you are alive is a blessing you know you do not fucking deserve, because you were never meant to live. The choices someone would have to make to justify ending your miserable fucking existence are laughably easy. A scratch is all it would take. A single drop of your hideous off spectrum blood, and everyone would agree that whoever killed you was a hero.

(you don't know that they would be wrong, to be regarded as such. are you not one of the rusted screws that stops the great machine of the empire? are you not as mortal as the rest, that you would declare yourself alone worthy of living when others had died with less justice. how can anyone declare a death unjust when there is always a worst one? how can any of us claim to suffer when there is always someone suffering more?)

You celebrate that time you have because you know all time runs out. You do, in fact, know time very well. Time is your best friend, that can never die. Time is your worst enemy, that you can never kill.

Time is everything.

 Your master, and your slave. Time rules you absolutely and obeys you absolutely. Time is the one paradox that you never question.

You wish you had not brought up slavery. You are a slave in all things, and in all ways. You are a slave to the cruelty of others, to your own self hatred, to your blood, to the sun, to the empire. Name one person that is free. Name one person that has never bent a knee to anything or anyone. There is no one. There are white hot chains around your wrists, and they burrow further into your marrow every second you are alive. If they payed attention, everyone else would feel them too. 

As you are a slave, so too is the sun a slave to gravity. The horrible harshness of day has been fading as you lie awake, knowing you should be asleep, and now it is night again. you did it. You have successfully stayed alive long enough to greet another tomorrow.

It is a blessing you can never take for granted.

(remember that.)

**Author's Note:**

> lord forgive me, im back on my bullshit


End file.
